Government discarded studies in making ‘mind-boggling’ remote-work decision

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Internal documents show that the federal government’s decision to send employees back to the office three days a week was made to gain the public’s trust and contradicted studies that found remote work boosted productivity.

Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) documents, obtained by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) through access to information requests, highlighted that the government analyzed work trends and hybrid work models in other countries and major companies.

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The documents show that TBS then considered several flexible work arrangements before it ultimately decided to impose its controversial new rules increasing workers’ office presence.

“This government once had a vision to build a modern, productive, and inclusive public service, but they’ve thrown it all away for no valid reason,” said PSAC national president Sharon DeSousa in a news release. “They had the research and results supporting a more flexible approach, but decided that butts in seats is more important than productivity. Their failure to follow the evidence on hybrid work is mind-boggling.”

The new remote work mandate, which took effect in early September, requires all staff employed under the Treasury Board to work on-site a minimum of three days a week. For executives, the expectation is that they work in the office four days a week. As of June, that included more than 282,000 workers, of the more than 367,000 working for the federal government.

A slide deck prepared by the Treasury Board’s Office of the Chief Human Resources officer in May 2022 offered three return-to-office options.

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The recommended choice was a “flexible first” option “without prescribed office parameters.” Pros of that option, it said, would be to build diverse and geographically distributed talent pools and have the largest office reductions, leading to more environmental benefits. But the deck warned that a flexible option “could be subject to negative public scrutiny” and would be disruptive from a management perspective.

The other options it shared were an “ad hoc” option which would have employees work mostly on-site with increased use and acceptance of telework and a “scheduled” option, which would have employer-prescribed office presence of three days a week. It said the latter option “could level the playing field between different departments” but would impact recruitment and retention and may not reduce office footprint. It said it would also be “logistically difficult to move to unassigned seating.”

The slide deck found that while on-site presence was beneficial for collaboration and building an office culture, off-site presence was beneficial for work-life balance and productivity, as fewer interruptions “leads to a high focus on tasks at hand, improving efficiency and overall performance.”

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It noted that “one size does not fit all” and said that flexibility and accommodation should be a part of the design on the hybrid model, “not just an afterthought.”

“Flexible option” removed from equation

Another slide deck, dated Feb. 28, 2024, did not include a flexible option. That deck instead offered three different options: to maintain the former directive while ending exceptions; to send only executives back to the office three days a week; or to require “enterprise re-adjustment,” mandating a minimum of three days in office for all workers.

The slide said the last option, which was eventually adopted with executives required to go into the office four days a week, was the “most disruptive,” noting that the government would need to “manage employee reactions.”

Drivers behind remote work decision include gaining public trust

A February 2024 update on the hybrid work model by TBS said there were six main drivers behind updating the directive, including equity and public trust.

It noted the “scrutiny of government service delivery and faster hybrid adoption in other jurisdictions” as well as the economic context of a “potential recession and high inflation” versus “perceptions of public service growth and compensation.”

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In an email to the Ottawa Citizen, deputy clerk of the Privy Council Christiane Fox said in late August that the motivation to bring people back to the office more regularly was to be “as high performing as we can be to serve Canadians.”

“That said, we cannot ignore the perception of the public service as it is directly related to trust and confidence of Canadians in their public service and public institutions at large,” Fox said. “It is not strictly about individual performance and productivity, it is about the public service as a whole. We strongly believe that an increased in-office presence will enhance the public service’s ability to continue providing Canadians with the services and support they expect and deserve.”

Survey shows remote work increases workers’ productivity

A June 2023 survey on hybrid and remote work in Canada’s public service by the Global Government Forum, also released as part of the bundle of documents obtained by PSAC, found that many officials said they were more productive working remotely (over 45 per cent) and had a better work-life balance (over 30 per cent). The survey also found that losing face-to-face interaction with colleagues was the main downside to remote work.

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An October 2023 presentation on the direction found that the adoption of hybrid work models happened “at the same time Canadians experienced delays in service delivery.” It also cited two studies that found that while hybrid work has positive impacts on productivity, full-remote work lowers productivity. 

While the Treasury Board has said that it did not undertake any internal studies on productivity before amending the directive, Anand has since announced plans for a new government-led task force, which will analyze productivity in the public service.

Following the release of the documents, PSAC called on the government to “scrap the mandate, rethink its approach, and follow the evidence,” noting that the current directive “threatens productivity” and “undermines the values of fairness and collaboration the government claims to support.”

“If the government really wants to be a leader in the future of work, it’s time for them to start making evidence-based decisions that benefit both workers and the Canadian population,” said DeSousa. “Arbitrary mandates and ignoring the data will only set us back.”

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